Cruise Cancellation Policy – Read the fine print!

I have had reason to taken a closer look at the cruise cancellation policy as we are planning a family Christmas cruise.

At this stage we are just kicking ideas and itineraries around and if you can think that we will be travelling in a large group of 15 people there is definitely a lot of input coming from every direction.

Not only am I trying to take everyone’s wish list into consideration I have another reason to look further into the cruise cancellation policy is that I have a terminally ill family member wanting to come on the cruise.

Why to look closer at cruise cancellation policy

At this stage I have not booked anything as looking at the cancellation policy of most of the cruise ships they are very inflexible and require over 100 + days notice to get some of your money back.

This is what the response I received from Oz Cruising whom we normally do our bookings through:

“As of the Cruise lines we sell, Royal Caribbean, P&O, Princess, Carnival, Celebrity and Holland America charge fees at all times. Unfortunately, all short notice cancellations do incur fees, depending on how many days the cruise is from sail may result in 100% loss of fare, regardless of the circumstances.

Please find below a link to view all of the current terms and conditions for all of our sailings:”

Please read all terms and conditions carefully before making any booking through this site.

What to do about the cruise cancellation policy now?

Literally, we are not able to commit ourselves to the cruise as with a terminally ill man we are not able to give the required 100 days notice or more to cancel in fact we do not know from day to day how he will be.
To be honest I think that the cruise lines are too strict with their unmoving policies. I say that as my husband had the need to cancel his cruise due to surgery that he was having at the same time. He was able to give 101 days notice instead of the 145 days required by the cruise line.

The fact that he did not give the required notice meant a loss of $86O pp a donation to P&O! I rang the cruise line’s head office but to no avail.

We did not want to cancel we wanted the fares transferred to another date later in the year meant nothing to the cruise line.

Tips for passengers re: cruise cancellation policy

Read the fine print before even placing a deposit on your cruise

If you are not sure that you can give the required notice don’t sign

Take out insurance at the time of booking

Insurance does not cover the terminally ill

The cruise cancellation policy has put a damper on our party and we will need to book at the last minute and hopefully still get on and our terminally passenger is still well enough to travel.